August 9, 2010

Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft (Photo credit: NASA)

NOAA, in partnership with NCAR and NASA, will deploy a new dropsonde system
on the NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft during the Genesis and Rapid
Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment August 15 – September 30, 2010.
The dropsonde system will measure vertical profiles of air pressure,
temperature, humidity, and wind speed in order to better understand how
tropical storms develop and help improve predictions of hurricane
intensity. The Global Hawk is capable of flying up to 30 hours and with the
new system more than 90 sondes can be deployed in a given flight. Eight to
ten flights are planned into developing storms over the Gulf of Mexico and
Western Atlantic Ocean. Operation of the system will be led by Gary Wick
of the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Physical Sciences Division
and Michael Black of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological
Laboratory (AOML) Hurricane Research Division.

The NASA-led GRIP experiment is being conducted in concert with the NSF
Pre-Depression Investigation of Cloud Systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) and
NOAA Intensity Forecasting EXperiment (IFEX). The purpose of the
multi-year IFEX is to improve understanding and prediction of hurricane
intensity change by collecting observations through the lifecycle of a
tropical storm. This information can be used to help improve current
operational models and guide the development of the next-generation
Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting model (HWRF). Together the
experiments will field 7 aircraft with a broad range of instrumentation
enabling an unprecedented near round-the-clock look at developing tropical
storms.

The dropsonde system funded by the NOAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)
project and developed by the NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory is a
first-of-its-kind for a high altitude long endurance unmanned aircraft.
The system provides a significant advance over current capabilities where
around 30 sondes are typically deployed during manned aircraft flights of
less than 10 hours. Scientists and forecasters will be able to obtain a
much more comprehensive picture of storms and other subjects of interest
and increased data will be available for integration into forecast models.
Future missions are planned for Arctic research, winter storms, and
atmospheric river events.